What the Severe AQI of Delhi NCR This Week Tells Us About India’s Democracy

The collapse in the quality of the air that Delhi and large parts of North India inhales is connected with the quality of people’s lives. It has a severe impact on longevity.

It is lost on no one that air pollution is one of India’s most severe health threats. The recent Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) 2025 report by the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago said that air pollution had reduced the country’s average life expectancy by three-and-a-half years. The study found that toxic air robs Indians of nearly twice as many years as childhood and maternal malnutrition and more than five times the impact of unsafe water, sanitation, and handwashing, a report noted.

For Delhi-NCR, the report has news which is even grimmer – a loss of 8.2 years in life expectancy, based on the standard set by the World Health Organisation. 

All this was out well before Diwali 2025 choked the Delhi NCR. The crackers must have been injurious to health but what do the events of the past few days tell us about the health of democracy in India? It tells us four things.

1) A remarkable backtrack is in progress

This particular episode, was triggered by the Supreme Court of India, and aided and abetted by the government of Delhi, allowing ‘green crackers’ for several days and turning around on its own logic.

On October 14, last year, the Delhi government had announced a complete ban on all types of firecrackers until January 1, 2025, to curb air pollution. On November 11, in that same year, the Supreme Court expressed surprise over the delay in imposing that ban, saying that no religion would promote any activity that contributes to pollution or compromises the health of people. 

“The right to live in a pollution-free atmosphere is a fundamental right of every citizen under Article 21 of the Constitution. Prima facie, we are of the view that no religion encourages any activity that creates pollution. If firecrackers are burst in this fashion, it affects the fundamental right to health of citizens,” the top court had said in its order, as reported in The Wire.

In January, the same court extended the firecracker ban till March 2025 in the NCR areas in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. 

The same Supreme Court held on October 15 this year that green firecrackers may be permitted for Diwali and even personal events of celebrations such as weddings in the Delhi-NCR area has been far tougher on farmers when it came to stubble burning. 

Diwali night led to readings which were completely off the charts. 

This spoke of how little the apex court thought of its role as acting on a check on Executive push, based on a twisted idea of “what people want.” 

Also read: Why Permitting ‘Green’ Diwali Crackers in Delhi Defies Logic – and Science

2) Fireworks are central to a 'Sanatani government'

Even as Delhi gasped for normal air amidst a thick cover of toxic smog, the Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta shocked many when she claimed that her government's 'effective measures' had kept 'pollution under control' this Diwali. This, despite the fact that the AQI levels touched its worst after 2021 when the air quality was only slightly worse than this year.

Gupta chose to focus on the Sanatan traditions of Diwali, while defining the pollution problem in vague terms. "For the first time in many years, the city saw extraordinary sparkle, splendour and illumination. The people of Delhi have sensed that this time they have a govt that respects Sanatan (eternal) traditions, while also understanding the present-day needs and sentiments of the people.... Delhi govt remains deeply concerned about pollution and has been taking effective measures to control it," she said in the statement. 

Her statements were in keeping with many of her other recent utterances where Gupta has foregrounded faith over governance measures. As far as her 'effective measures' are concerned, she only spoke about her government deploying 1,000 water-spraying tankers and 140 anti-smog guns across the city that spans nearly 1483 square kilometres.

Concern for people’s health and lungs had been trumped by a logic of a Sanatani government. This speaks volumes of the distance Indian democracy had slipped. Note that Delhi's is a move which is seen as having the imprimatur of the executive because there was a change of government in the national capital from last year.

PM ने अपने लिए एयर प्यूरीफायर (Air Purifier) लगा रखा है , CM बता रही है कि प्रदूषण कम कर दिया pic.twitter.com/aJLsf0xmQ6

— Saurabh Bharadwaj (@Saurabh_MLAgk) October 22, 2025

3) Data can and will go missing

As per The Hindustan Times, only 23% of monitoring stations in Delhi collected complete data – only nine monitoring stations. The majority of stations did not show data in a crucial late night period. Delhi’s environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa was brazen, “All data is available on CPCB and on DPCC websites. There is no missing data. You have to check. Those who are saying there is missing data, you know what their intentions are,” he said at a press conference.

There was a view that machines stop functioning when data crosses 1,000 µg/m³. But some experts said that the machines could track data but mysteriously did not do so. “The observed pattern shows that most stations stopped providing data when they approached 1,000 µg/m³, while there were stations such as Anand Vihar, Nehru Nagar, Mundka, that recorded values above 1,000 µg/m³, indicating that the technology of monitoring isn’t an issue, at least in terms of being available. We have observed this over the past years too,” said Sunil Dahiya, founder and lead analyst of think tank EnviroCatalysts to Hindustan Times.

Sirsa went onto blame stubble burning for the Diwali horror for Delhiites. But the low levels of AQI in Punjab and the steep climb seen in the pattern for stations where the data was available, make it clear that the sharp spike was correlated with cracker burstings.

As an editorial in a national daily enquired, if the pollution in Delhi was 800% over the permissible limits, how will going for so-called ‘green crackers,’ supposed to reduce emissions by 30% help? 

Missing data on this, like the reams of other data in India that has gone missing in the past decade has a direct correlation on the quality of our democracy. Missing data or crucial gaps in data prevent accountability and do not allow democracy to function as it should, preventing common people, also voters, from being able to make connections and be rational. The missing census of 2021 is the starkest case in point. Obscuring data, as seen in missing data on the lack of oxygen during COVID, India's COVID deaths, the country's hunger deaths, and deaths from malnutrition helps those in power to retain their stranglehold on what is actually going on.

4. India has accepted the pollution crisis

India has been at the heart of a controversy about even the measure of air pollution accepted by government. The National Clean Air Programme, says this investigative story out earlier this year, “was meant to solve India’s air crisis. Instead, it created a measurement system that shows progress on paper while citizens can’t breathe.” The system focusses on dust (most visible) of the pollutants in the air, but wilfully ignores SO2, PM 2.5, NO2. Particulate Matter 2.5 or PM 2.5 being the worst and leading to dangers well beyond the respiratory system. India Today reported last year how the CPCB, India's official environmental body, “caps AQI readings at a maximum of 500, which signifies "severe" pollution levels. In contrast, international platforms often report AQI values exceeding 1,000 for the same locations.”

India’s neighbour, China, when faced with the prospect of a gloomy ‘Beijing smog,’ which many thought would remain as a big deterrent to Chinese growth in general, got its act together, recognised the problem took tough steps and got back “clear blue skies.” Today, it is leading the charge for renewable energy in the world by a long lead.

In sum, any drive towards a better and more sustainable economic future in a country of 1.4 billion would have to be based on improving lives of people. Governments must be inspired to act on hard and realistic data, acknowledge the problem and be kept in check by the judiciary. 

But this instance of a Supreme Court that has taken steps which have reversed earlier gains without providing rationale, AQI data that is either not disclosed or missing, question marks over data India officially uses to measure the problem and a government that is framing this falsely and cynically as ‘sanatani’ versus clean air, actually is an indicator of how India’s democracy is sliding backward. If rationality, data, courts hesitating to take reasonable decisions, even if unpopular and a government which must prioritise public health are moving in the opposite direction, democracy, which is about accountability to the people and the wellbeing of all, is also pushed back.

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